Most might have heard of it….Most surely don’t know enough about it…..but the “currency of the future” is far from inclusive and sings the same painstaking tune of many hopeful ventures before.
Bitcoin?
Let’s get into the right questions to begin. What is bitcoin? According to NerdWallet “Bitcoin is a form of digital currency that uses blockchain technology to support transactions between users on a decentralized network.” Still confused ? Lets back up.
Since the days of the early ancient Nubians and the land of Kush, which would eventually be modern-day Sudan/Egypt, gold has been used as a central currency for trading among civilizations. Gold was deemed high value due to its importance in ancient religious necklaces, crowns, and artifacts. As thousands of years pass, gold passes through stages of being traded as bars and coins in which leads us until the early 1810s when Europe’s banks adopt a standard of repaying debts and exchanging banknotes for gold. From then banks used gold as a reliable store of value and to regulate trade and commerce. Enter 1930s America, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt chipped away at the Gold standard within America by reversing the course that mandated that creditors accept gold for repayments. Nixon did his final chop by taking the American dollar off the gold standard (ensuring that the US dollar no longer was backed by gold, meaning seemingly unlimited credit backed by the faith of the US government) and plunging the American economy and subsequently the world economy into a new government-led centralized fiat dollar system across the world.
Let’s fast forward back to more modern times. With the landscape currency-wise being what it has been for so long, the widespread and innovative use of the internet seemed to provide a way forward for those usually left feeling like they have no real control over earnings, wages, and have no path forward to holding tangible assets. Bitcoin was introduced anonymously through a series of white papers in 2008(sort of like online instructions) that set up an open-source software that, through networks of computers, created a digital currency that was completely free of government regulation and interference. Seemingly, a new world is born, after almost decades of owning your tangible assets being just a dream when America’s gold hoarding… excuse me… regulating of currencies caused many average Americans to feel like holding their government-backed currency wasn’t causing the wealth building it always promised. After 17 years, that anonymous post has now turned what was a peer-to-peer currency into a viable asset worth more than 100,000 dollars currently just to own one, and has a total trading value of USD 67,606,433,783. Buying a portion of one is easier than ever, and with countries like Venezuela accepting bitcoin as official tender and some other countries investing in bitcoin, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Yet the gloom of corporate interference, greed among users, and mass manipulation encompasses many capitalist ventures, and bitcoin is another hopeful light that is currently clouded.
Pros to Bitcoin:
- Decentralized currency
- Easily attainable and tradable
- Currently, hedge’s much higher than inflation, making it a valuable asset
- Secure transactions recorded on a public ledger making every transaction viewable no matter what
Con’s to Bitcoin:
- Volatility is very high making it risky to invest
- Environmental impact the “mining” of these coins has is expected to be massive
- Regulatory concerns—Even though some countries have adopted bitcoin purchases, many have not yet laid out a path for regulating bitcoin, making the path to full sustainability harder.
The Hard Truth
Bitcoin is not new. The idea of a centralized currency via the tools of the internet may be newer (even The Jetsons depicted paper money in 2062). Still, the idea falls short of breaking ground on the realities of many people of the world. It, in fact, has a future destined to further impact those people who won’t be able to readily access it ever in their lifetimes. Bitcoin has easily been hijacked from a modest grassroots movement rooted in the widespread reach of the internet, and has now been manipulated and controlled by business interests, and instead of solving the wage gap relations it was intended to, but Bitcoin has now only been used to further that divide.
A recent BBC article depicted how, in Dresden, New York, they are currently experiencing the effects of the new mining landscape for Bitcoin. There is a massive factory that, along with emitting a humming sound that the town can hear constantly, emits harmful emissions. In West Texas, Sangha just broke ground on a bitcoin mining site that expects to make 42 million in revenue. Nearly 46 percent of the emissions from the mining of Bitcoin are from the United States. The environmental impact of these mining sites on rural areas is too new to nail down an exact impact, but if the large site data holding centers are any indication of what these mining sites can do to the environment, then it’s a tune we have all heard before. Large-scale impact on those areas where sites are is just one way bitcoin affects the underserved people, but the economic effect of bitcoin on those same people is even bigger.
The time was now….
Large-scale misinformation on Bitcoin early in its adoption led the way for many to see Bitcoin as a pigeon hole for scammers, as it is highly volatile and easily transactional. The rarity of what Bitcoin is has caused many fake investor firms and fake mining mills to come up, causing even more widespread misinformation and speculation about the digital asset. This moniker, bitcoin, has been made through the advantageous eyes of investors, scammers, and modest grassroots organizers looking to finally be a part of the wealth they have been held from, has been a muddy one. Due to that muddy name, many have not even considered investing. In 2011, when Bitcoin was in its early stages, you could invest and get 1 Bitcoin for the price of 5 dollars. By 2017, that 1 bitcoin, if you had held it, would be worth 20,000. Fast forward to 2025, and 1 bitcoin, as I mentioned earlier, is trading at 112,000 dollars. Due to the highly volatile nature, it may be higher or much lower by the time you are reading this.
Due to where bitcoin is now, the many small-time investors or individuals looking to get in and take advantage of that possible wealth are now priced out. As companies like Elon Musk’s Tesla own 11,000 bitcoins, totaling a little over a billion dollars at the current rate. For instance, the company that holds the highest amount of bitcoin owns 576,000 bitcoins. With the price at over 100,000 to purchase one, it seems that anyone without a large nest egg ready can not buy in at a sustainable rate. Even the fractional transactions of buying Satoshi’s (named after the founder of the white papers and being essentially a smaller unit of a bitcoin, think cents to dollars) through apps like Cash App, Coinbase and Strike may not be enough for one of the 150 million Americans who do not even have 1,000 dollars saved in thier banks accounts according to CNBC. Early birds got the bitcoin worm and were able to cash in on the high volatility of one bitcoin, and big companies have bought so much bitcoin seemingly to better control that volatility. When fractional sales of stocks became prominent in it promised the lower capital investor could have the same opportunity as the bigger ones, yet the closing of the wealth gap has been further from that since its introduction.
Bitcoin, in its inception and to many of its investors and long-time HODLers (a play on the holding term that implies buying and holding an asset until it reaches its maximum peak or most profitable peak), is a way forward from the government-held and controlled system of currency we are currently in. Yet that same mission that was placed to empower a class of people who weren’t able to obtain wealth through the fiat currency system easily would be hijacked by large corporate interests and countries looking to overturn their country’s economy.
The class of people underserved and looking for ways to build wealth may have benefited from widespread knowledge of bitcoin early in its adoption, but the intentional confusion was used to pave the way for those who are living paycheck to paycheck, unable to invest. Where should one go if Bitcoin isn’t the answer? Investments in oneself should be the primary goal for most. Many investment strategies are rooted in the promise of chance and unstable gains. If you are trying to advance your family and your fortune, where do you turn in a landscape of declining physical assets and unstable digital ones?
A way forward?
Group economics may be the fundamental lesson that can be learned from Bitcoin, even if its adoption was corrupted by other interests. Building wealth with the people around you that you can trust is a viable path. Building resource-rich foundations among the people who are struggling with you currently can come with problems, but it must be utilized for sustainable wealth control to shine at the forefront. Take the knowledge from these “new” paths at stability and use that to root your economics in the values and items your communities need most. Controlling those resources on any level has been productive for communities throughout history despite whatever interference has come. Engaging in a self-sustainable economy is key to wealth. Wealth can be described as just the plentiful supplies of a particular resource. Changing our idea of resources from paper and digital currency to the very basic idea of a resource that has been lost, which is a source of supply or support. Look no longer into the government or internet-backed resources that have been shifted in front of us, while the real resources are mismanaged and controlled by players who do not have others’ best interests at heart. I implore readers to look into books like Black Economics: Solutions for Economic and Community Empowerment by Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap by Mehrsa Baradaran and The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown as starting points to finding out solutions to this recurring issue.
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